Posted on 01/30/2007 6:55:15 AM PST by pissant
Skip the boring bulk of Public Editor Byron Calame's latest innocuous, inside-baseball column and skip straight to the brief shirt-tail, "Drawing a Line."
Apparently some liberal Times readers complained that Times military reporter Michael Gordon had the bad taste to go on the PBS talk show"Charlie Rose" January 8 and say he wanted the United States to win the war in Iraq.
Calame:
"Times editors have carefully made clear their disapproval of the expression of a personal opinion about Iraq on national television by the paper’s chief military correspondent, Michael Gordon.
"The rumored military buildup in Iraq was a hot topic on the Jan. 8 'Charlie Rose' show, and the host asked Mr. Gordon if he believed 'victory is within our grasp.' The transcript of Mr. Gordon’s response, which he stressed was 'purely personal,' includes these comments:
"'So I think, you know, as a purely personal view, I think it’s worth it [sic] one last effort for sure to try to get this right, because my personal view is we’ve never really tried to win. We’ve simply been managing our way to defeat. And I think that if it’s done right, I think that there is the chance to accomplish something.'"
A Charlie Rose watcher complained, and Calame acted.
"I raised reader concerns about Mr. Gordon's voicing of personal opinions with top editors, and received a response from Philip Taubman, the Washington bureau chief. After noting that Mr. Gordon has 'long been mindful and respectful of the line between analysis and opinion in his television appearances,' Mr. Taubman went on to draw the line in this case.
"'I would agree with you that he stepped over the line on the ‘Charlie Rose’ show. I have discussed the appearances with Michael and I am satisfied that the comments on the Rose show were an aberration. They were a poorly worded shorthand for some analytical points about the military and political situation in Baghdad that Michael has made in the newspaper in a more nuanced and unopinionated way. He agrees his comments on the show went too far.'
"It’s a line drawn correctly by Mr. Taubman -- and accepted honorably by Mr. Gordon."
Apparently Gordon's sin was to admit he was putting forth a personal view. He should have been like his colleague Neil MacFarquhar, who works the Muslim-American beat, and who advanced his own liberal opinion on the Charlie Rose show, without any caveats about it being his "own personal view" (although it obviously was).
MacFarquhar appeared on "Charlie Rose" last July and slipped in this anti-Bush, America-critical personal commentary:
“If you talk to people my age -- I’m in my mid-40s -- and who grew up in poor countries like Morocco, you know, they will tell you that when they went to school in the mornings, they used to get milk, and they called it Kennedy milk because it was the Americans that sent them milk. And in 40 years, we have gone from Kennedy milk to the Bush administration rushing bombs to this part of the world. And it just erodes and erodes and erodes America’s reputation.”
Apparently MacFarquhar didn't get any lectures from Times editors for voicing liberal opinions on the Charlie Rose show.
Sorry, Don't read TNYT, I have children and I don't allow pornography in the house
One has to question why the reporter was even on the show if he was not there to offer an opinion.
"A Charlie Rose watcher complained, and Calame acted."
Censorship. Can't have someone saying something the liberals don't want you to hear.
nytimes... NOT EVEN fit to wrap fish in..........
He was expected to have an opinion ... the problem was he had the WRONG opinion (according to the NYT).
Why should we be surprised??? The same paper that has been giving terrorists and tyrants the benefit of the doubt for years is not wanting America to win another war?
I'm shocked, I tell ya. I'm in total shock.
Expressing one's own opinion is "stepping over the line"?.......Balderdash! Poppycock! Global Warming!.......
"..Chief Executive Janet Robinson told an investor group in December that the Ochs-Sulzberger family won't change the long-standing dual-class share structure that has given it control of the company. The family owns about 20 percent of the company but maintains effective control through a separate class of shares that has special voting rights.
Earlier this month The New York Times said it will be cutting about 125 positions through buyouts and other steps at The Boston Globe and the Telegram & Gazette of Worcester and outsourcing some finance and advertising work..."
As long as the Ochs-Sulzberger family has control with its "special" class of stock nothing can change. I don't know why it is legal for this stock to be publicly traded when there is a reserved class with all the power the buying public has no access to. Corruption is inevitable in such a system. Does anyone think that drooling imbecile Pinch Sulzberger would be chairman of The New York Times Company without a fixed voting system?
"Do you want the United States of America to win the war in Iraq?"
Get them on the record, or make them squirm.
Wrong thinking is punished, right thinking is just as swiftly rewarded.
I wonder if he would have been "chastised" if he had said that his personal opinion is that the U. S. had no chance of winning and the surge was a mistake?
Maybe Charlie Rose should have asked Gordon for his assessment of the wisdom of holding NYT common stock in an investment portfolio...given the widespread reportage of its plummeting value, Gordon surely couldn't have been accused of offering a personal opinion on THAT...
I Don't read TNYT, I don't allow hate pamphlets in the house.
Editors won't be railing at the inequity of Ochs-Sulzberger class stock. That is for sure.
BUMP!
Each day it becomes clearer and clearer that the NYT, and indeed a majority of the mainstream media, are anti-American. They want to see our country brought to its knees, their hatred for Bush knows no bounds, and they have more sympathy for terrorists than they do for their fellow Americans. During the 20s and 30s they rooted for and defended Stalin, and they only reason the NYT sided with America against Hitler during World War II is that it is owned by Jews. It has now turned on Israel. It is ambivalent on the subject of 9/11. Its reporters and editors and management repreent the greatest gathering of America haters this side of the Washington Post. For that reason I tend to read the travel section, the truly hilarious wedding announcements, and little else.
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